


Pieces of a life long lost

by DarkShadeless



Series: Ties That Bind [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: A+ Parenting, Gen, Magic, and what it means in Thedas, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: It is one of his first memories. They never do see their brother again, after.





	Pieces of a life long lost

**Author's Note:**

> not beta read, so if there's any mistakes left they're all mine but you can keep them if you like

It is one of his first memories. Tears prickling in his eyes. Their brother, picking on them. Shouting. His sister, angry. He can never recall what she says as she shoves Daylen.

Suddenly, the curtains alight.

 

They come that night. He remembers that too. Looming figures, all over steel and red cloth with golden stitching.

They never do see their brother again, after.

 

-

 

It happens again. He is older this time but still so very small. His head isn’t of a height with the dinner table.

Mellard knows this because that is where they run to hide when the lights appear, floaty ghost-like things. They look like something out of a story their minder would tell them, when Mother couldn’t hear, only they were here and they were _real_.

He thinks they had meant to sneak into the kitchen to steal an apple or two, with Oliver, fumbling in the dark that makes their big house just a little scary. 

 

They tell the minder, tell her about the lights, that they were _there_.

It’s not long before Oliver is gone, too.

 

-

 

They aren’t allowed to talk about them. Father gets so angry. The pictures they had been made to sit so long for are gone. The rooms that used to belong to their brothers are locked now, always.

Mother looks so sad, often. His sisters notice too but not as much. They are too boisterous, too loud. She hears them coming. Mellard isn’t. He can be quiet.

She watches them, when she thinks they won’t see. He doesn’t know what the look on her face means.

 

-

 

Solona trips in the library, on the ladder they aren’t supposed to use. Instead of falling, she floats.

Later, when he is curled up under the covers with Emily and trying to ignore the voices downstairs, Mellard feels bad for wondering if it wouldn’t have been better if she had hurt herself instead.

They only have each other now.

 

-

 

The house feels too empty, so they play outside. It’s a sunny, sunny day, so bright and then suddenly the air is glittering.

This moment, more than all others before, stays with him forever. Snowflakes, in summer, catching the light. The marvel of this impossible thing his sister’s hands have made.

They are beautiful.

Wonder, shattering under the dread of what they both know will come, if anyone finds out.

 

They tell no one.

It doesn’t matter, in the end.

 

-

 

Mother gets sick. She spends all day in bed, curtains drawn. The servants take to speaking in whispers, like they do before the Templars come.

She will smile only for Mellard and only sometimes. He tries to make her do that more often, make her happy, despite everything. For a while it seems to help.

It’s not enough.

 

-

 

At the service a Chantry sister tell him it will all be alright. His mother is with the Maker now, at peace. He’ll see her again, someday. Mellard looks at her skirts, the shiny golden sunburst, and wonders.

Did that mean that Mother got to see his siblings again? That she didn’t have to be so sad anymore? Maybe it really would be alright then, even if it wasn’t fair that they all went and he didn’t get to go. Would he? Why not now?

He doesn’t get an answer to his questions before his Father drags him away, furious.

 

-

 

His Father says that Mother is _not_ where his siblings are. That they never will go where she went. People like them don’t, people who do magic.

He spits the word like it’s a curse. Like _they_ are cursed.

 

_A curse upon our entire line, bringing shame to this family! You won't speak of them again, boy, do you hear me!_

 

Mellard has never been so scared of him.

But there is something growing inside of him that wasn’t there before. It’s filling up the hole Emily left, the space where his brothers and sisters should be and it burns and burns with every word their Father says until he feels like it will eat him _up_.

His father will never know how lucky he is that this child of his, the last he can claim, has no magic at all.

 

It doesn’t happen right away.

It bubbles in Mellard’s chest, flares with every time he is punished for asking someone where his siblings went. For slipping up and talking about them in front of guests, neighbours. For keeping little things he finds sometimes, that belonged to someone who is gone now.

For not being the son his Father wanted for an heir, the daughter who should have taken over the household someday. For looking at their Father with their Mother’s eyes, mouth set, defiant.

Mellard won’t remember, later, what it was that made it all too much. What had the terrible things he felt come out, spill out of him in words and angry tears.

 

_I hate you! I wish they had taken me too!_

 

And so they do.

He still doesn’t get to see his siblings again, or go where they went.

 

-

 

Mellard does wonder, sometimes, how worn down his father must have been to give the last of his line away as he did, when its survival had seemed so important to him. Wonders how his siblings are, if they are still alive. If they are well.

Not often. Most days he simply doesn’t think of it.

He's sworn to service to Andraste, to the Maker. He has a duty to fulfil. There is little time to ponder a past long gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Face claim for Mellard & Emily around 9:31 Dragon:  
> http://darkshadeless.tumblr.com/post/165813107958/since-ive-finally-posted-a-story-they-were


End file.
